Data and Code for: "Assessing the Gains from E-Commerce"

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Liran Einav, Stanford University; Peter Klenow, Stanford University; Johannes Paul Dolfen, Uber; Ben Klopack, Texas A&M University; Wayne Best, Visa, Inc.; Jonathan Levin, Stanford University; Larry Levin, Visa, Inc.

Version:  View help for Version V1

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Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary E-commerce represents a rapidly growing share of consumer spending in the U.S. We use transactions-level data on credit and debit cards from Visa, Inc. between 2007 and 2017 to quantify the resulting consumer surplus. We estimate e-commerce reached 8% of consumption by 2017, yielding the equivalent of a 1% boost to their consumption, or over $1,000 per household per year. While some of the gains arose from avoiding travel costs to local merchants, most of the gains stemmed from substituting to merchants available online but not locally. Higher income consumers gained more, as did consumers in more densely populated counties. This package includes replication code to reproduce the tables and figures in the paper.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms:  View help for Subject Terms E-commerce
JEL Classification:  View help for JEL Classification
      L81 Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce
      L86 Information and Internet Services; Computer Software
      O33 Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
      O47 Empirical Studies of Economic Growth; Aggregate Productivity; Cross-Country Output Convergence
Geographic Coverage:  View help for Geographic Coverage United States
Universe:  View help for Universe US consumers with Visa-issued credit and debit cards


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V1 [2022-12-09]

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